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Atrios on Trent Lott:

While Trent Lott’s remarks were clearly over the line, it isn’t as if – to many liberals – it was the first time he’s crossed it. While I don’t think all Right Wing/Republican voting types are racist’s, its rare I find one who doesn’t have a tin ear when it comes to racial issues, even when feigning concern. In all fairness this isn’t limited to self-described conservatives – even the relatively liberal members of our not so liberal media see no problem with making a statement like “Jesse Helms isn’t a racist, he just exploited the racism of his constituents to get himself elected.” Still, while the condemnations of Lott by some were clearly genuine, forgive me for thinking that the condemnation from some circles isn’t motivated more by a desire to see a Senate Majority Leader Nickles than any true concern. Hey, nothing wrong with a little crass opportunism I suppose – whatever real outrage I feel is also admittedly accompanied by some schaudenfreude.



Through the Looking Glass on why
George Glider is still an idiot:

But the test of falsifiability only works if you apply it. The hypothesis that particularly Winnick, Skilling, Ebbers, and Waksal are trustworthy individuals has been utterly refuted by events. (That’s why Gilder’s “disgraced former executives” are, in fact, disgraced). The proper Popperian would discard the hypothesis and move on. And the application of this “Popperian” criterion is doubly ironic when applied to Waksal, who went into business after getting bounced out of hard science for lying to his colleagues and fraudulent work.


Alas a Blog on apologies:

And more importantly: why the hell is the leader of the Democrats defending Trent Lott on CNN? Is Daschle thinking, “gee, us Dems haven’t been trounced enough by the Republicans lately. I’d better get on the national news immediately and defend Trent Lott! Otherwise there’s a chance that there might be some infinitesimal part of the Republican agenda that doesn’t get passed right away!”